Category Archives: Business Incubator

This lesson provides a general overview of legal issues impacting entrepreneurs today including business structure, intellectual property, truth in advertising, patent law, and trademark law.

Required Outcomes

Students will create documents that outline what they need to protect and how they can protect the key components relevant to their business. This information should be stored in shared folder for future reference.

Teams will create an estimated legal budget that will be used in their final financial model.

Legal

Day 1

As a business owner, it’s important to protect both your personal assets and business assets. The links below are sample documents that you might fill out when establishing your business’s legal structure

Day 2

As a startup founder, it can be tempting to Google Image search pictures to be used on your website and social media accounts, but use of such imagery is likely an infringement on someone else’s intellectual property. The resources below offer images that are licensed under the creative commons and are intended to be used for any purpose including commercial use.

Students will explore the concept of a minimum viable product (MVP) and create/design an appropriate MVP for their business.

Required Outcomes

Design an MVP and identify resources needed to complete it

Discuss MVP with mentor and get feedback on proposed approach

MVP Design

Types of MVP Design

Your group will be assigned a specific type of MVP design to examine. Add a definition and example in the slide deck below (shared with you via Google Classroom) to your assigned slide. Use the resource below to help you get started:

This lesson covers the basic steps needed to create a web presence for the team’s product or service.

Required Outcomes

Students will understand the key components for plan, build, launch when creating web or mobile applications to communicate their business idea.

Students will develop a mock up website for their business that supports their MVP design.

Web/App Development

Statement of Work

Outline and establish the scope of your project by writing a statement of work. This document will force your team to consider exactly what you are you seeking to build. Examine a sample statement of work for The Law Offices of Smith and Howard.

Once you understand what a statement of work entails, click the link below to write one for your company. Make sure you save this file into your team’s Unit 5 folder via Google Drive.

Sitemap

A sitemap shows the relationship of the different pages on the website and can help determine the general user experience from beginning (the homepage) to the end (various destination pages). With your team, hand sketch your entire website’s sitemap.

Analytics

Web Plan Assignment

Click the link below to make a copy of the Web Plan Assignment document. Here your will keep track of three important overriding questions to consider as you build your website.

Students will journey to the completion of their year long entrepreneurship experience. The year will culminate with teams pitching their business story to investors. This will be the classroom version of “Shark Tank.” The content of this unit is heavily focused on developing the financial story that supports whether a business idea and team should be awarded funding to continue and pursue their idea. Students will use analysis of their financial model to determine if their business model is repeatable, scalable and worth funding.

Schools will choose whether the student pitch is an academic activity only or a pitch for real funding dollars. Regardless of the path, all students will learn the process of developing a pitch to investors which includes: clearly presenting their product solution, the problem they are solving, the evidence they have gathered during this course to support further pursuit, and the financial viability of their model.

Enduring Understandings

Successful entrepreneurs are able to persuasively articulate their business idea to investors.

Starting a business requires money.

Starting a business requires a team that works together.

There are a variety of options for entrepreneurs to consider when looking for funds (money) to start their business.

Essential Questions

What sources of funding should I consider to start my business and what are the expectations required of me to access these different resources?

How can I work effectively with my team to promote our product or service to investors?

How can I utilize effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills when presenting to investors?

Expected Outcomes by end of Unit

Teams will update and optimize all their inputs to their financial model. Students will assess the outputs of the model determine the financial health of the business and build the story for why they are seeking investment.

Students will put their business story together. That is, summarize their business concept and their learning from their MVP experience, and the financials. Students will develop a funding request, practice presentations skills and present their business idea with a recommended investment request.

This unit begins with an introduction to the art and principles of Storytelling and how entrepreneurs craft meaningful stories for influence. Students will discuss effective storytelling techniques and get the chance to practice these techniques when crafting the story of their team through this course. Next, students will begin to understand how to build awareness and promote their business with the goal of getting customers. Students will develop marketing and sales plans for their company. Plans will include selling strategies, promotional tactics and will have corresponding budget estimates. The plans created will be used to complete the “Customer Relationships” and “Channels” sections of the team’s business model canvas. It is recommended that coaches with expertise in sales, marketing and small business communication lead instruction throughout this unit.

This unit is closely tied to the concepts introduced in Unit 2-Customer Discovery, and Unit 3-Customer Connections. Help students make the connection with reference to the key outputs they created in those lessons. Important referenceable documents include; customer empathy maps, customer personas, positioning statements and channel maps. Teams should be able to see the need and benefit of updating these documents based on evidence they are gathering with their MVP tests.

Enduring Understandings

Marketing shapes the public’s perception of a product and can make it more desirable or memorable.

With limited resources, start-ups critically evaluate and prioritize how to spend money to grow a business.

Successful entrepreneurs know their customers well and adjust their sales approach accordingly.

Essential Questions

What is the purpose of storytelling and how does it apply to business and entrepreneurship?

How does my team promote our product to match the demands of the market?

How does my team utilize information we have collected on competitors to make marketing decisions?

How do different communication strategies impact the financial viability of my business?

Expected Outcomes by end of Unit

Students will create a presentation for their team’s story. This will be used to help their creation of a final pitch presentation in Unit 8.

Students will determine a sales approach and write an action plan.

Students will develop a communications strategy and estimate costs of this marketing budget.

Key Terms

Storytelling techniques

Emotional hook

Call to action

Appropriate language

Marketing Tactics

Attending trade shows

Foot canvassing

Traditional ad buys

Digital ad buys

Social Media

Providing value

Sales Planning

Characteristics of a salesperson

Generally knowledgeable

Persistent

Resilient

Tactics

“Cold calling”

“Warm calling”

Team sales

Listening to the customer

Strategies

Referrals

Research

Understand your product/service

Shareback

Students will present an update on MVP test learning, changes being made and how this will shape their business story and marketing plans.

Preparation for this exercise will help prepare students for the final pitch and marketing section of the pitch. You will be graded according to this rubric.Follow this structure for your presentation:

Introduce team and company via an elevator pitch.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

How will you be solving the problem (solution)?

Who has this problem (customer segment)? What value do you provide them?

What is the status of your MVP testing at this moment?

Discuss your key metrics and how close/far away you are in achieving them?

Based off of your current metrics, timeline remaining and budget status, what are your next steps to continue/aspire to achieve those metrics?

Based on your progress and communications with early adopters, what have you learned about your company?

At this stage, students begin testing their more refined business model assumptions which have evolved into an MVP. The goal of this phase is to validate Product/Market fit by placing the MVP with potential customers and measuring the response. Students will launch and measure the effectiveness of their MVP with tracking tools and through the interpretation of results. A critical understanding is that testing will lead to adjusting (iterate or pivot) their model which will lead to better validation of its potential. Teams will develop project management skills and establish responsibilities. Students will need encouragement to experiment and be open to change. With a mindset that is open to learning students have the opportunity to evolve their idea with greater odds of success.

Enduring Understandings

Successful entrepreneurs develop clear plans to guide the experimentation of any new idea.

Entrepreneurs continually refine their ideas and plans based on data and feedback.

Essential Questions

What role does planning and delegation have for the team in implementing your MVP tests?

How can my team best utilize data analysis to inform decision about the business?

What legal issues should I be aware of as I create a business and engage with customers and vendors?

Expected Outcomes by end of Unit

Practice team communication and delegation with effective project management strategies.

Launch the MVP with customers. Collect and analyze data to validate assumptions.

Communicate MVP findings and begin to revise ideas and tests based on data and feedback.

Key Terms

Implementation Plan

What

Who

When

Gantt Chart

Project Management

Project Management Software

Basecamp

Minimum Viable Product Validation

Data Collection

Short Feedback Loop

Build, Measure, Learn

Product Market Fit

THREAD

Teamwork

Honesty

Respect Excellence

Accountability

Drive

Intellectual Property

Trade Secret

Copyright

Design Patent

Utility Patent

Trademark

Shareback

Each team will make a 4 to 6-minute presentation to share with the rest of the class. You will be graded according to this rubric.Follow this structure for your presentation:

Introduce team and company via an elevator pitch.

What is the problem you are trying to solve?

How will you be solving the problem (solution)?

Who has this problem (customer segment)? What value do you provide them?

Explain your MVP test results to date and learning

What are you doing for your MVP? What parts of your model are you trying to validate?

What data/metrics will you follow to ensure validation

What is your current progress towards achieving your goals?

Based off of your current metrics, timeline remaining and budget status, what are your next steps to continue/aspire to achieve those metrics/data?

Based on your progress and communications (quantitative and qualitative) with early adopters, what have you learned about your company?

Early adopters being participants in your concierge MVP or those that have provided contact information (highly motivated potential customers).

During this unit, students will develop an abbreviated prototype of their business to test the efficacy of their idea before bringing it to full scale. This is called the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Each team will present their MVP and funding proposal to your programs Board of Directors (or advisors) who will provide each team with valuable feedback and possibly a small amount of funding to launch their MVP. A Board of Directors is recommended but not necessary. The Board of Directors (BOD) can be created from local community members who serve as the steering committee for your local INCubatoredu class. It is important the BOD understands the class methodology, BMC framework and purpose of the MVP to add value during this process.

The unit begins with an introduction and description of MVP design. Students are then introduced to the basics of website design as it provides a likely vehicle in which students will choose to develop and/or communicate their MVP to customers. The unit concludes with students presenting to the BOD and asking for small funding dollar grants to enable them to test their MVP. Students are not asking for funding to build a fully functioning and developed product. As students learn, that is not the purpose of the testing process they aim to complete through MVP validation.

Enduring Understandings

Entrepreneurs validate their business ideas by bringing abbreviated versions of their product/service to the market called MVP’s.

Entrepreneurs continually refine their ideas and plans based on data and feedback from customers.

Successful entrepreneurs are able to persuasively articulate their business idea to investors.

Accurate records and data are critical to analyzing the success or failure of the MVP process.

Essential Questions

What is the best type of MVP to launch to gain market data for validation of an idea?

How can I work effectively with my team to design and promote an abbreviated version of our product or service to the market?

How can I utilize my verbal and non-verbal communication skills when presenting to investors?

How can my team maximize the internet and technology resources to create an MVP what will provide evidence?

Expected Outcomes by end of Unit

Students will design an MVP and get feedback on it.

Students will develop initial cost estimates and utilize the MVP funding process.

Students will practice strategies for successful public speaking and present an MVP pitch to class and a BOD.